Reversible Decisions

Clear back in June, I had a vague idea of wanting to do something Pride related. 

T'was the season and all. 

But I also was inspired by a friend's recent FO, a giant, squishy grey shawl. 

Soooo.... I combined the two!

No real pattern. I just knew that I wanted a triangle shape with a cabled spine.

I had some lovely yarn in my stash that was grey with a small pastel rainbow section. I started with a plain grey, faded into the pastel, and then decided that I didn't like the last color I had picked out, so attempted to dye myself something that would work with what I had.

And if that wasn't enough, I also decided near the end that I liked the back of the shawl better than the front. Which meant that I had to drop the spine clear back to the beginning, flip the shawl over, and knit everything back up.

There was a lot of cursing involved, but I did it, damnit.

It was totally worth it.

I wish I could say that it's one of my favorites in my collection, but somebody stole it right from me. 

Good thing I love you, Robyn. 

Listing to One Side

I have so many things I'm juggling right now that if I were to try and write them in a coherent fashion, I'd be chained to this laptop for a week.

Sooooo......

LIST IT UP, BEFORE I GO GO-back to working on this massive list, like, gaddamn.

1. I hit a hundred posts on here! Well, really this one makes 104. I'm really bad about stuff like this, people. I missed my 8k view mark by over 100 views...

2. We went to Cleveland Pride a few weeks ago and it was an amazing and fun experience (minus the sunburn). I REALLY want to take the time to write a proper post about this, but I honestly probably won't get to it until after Ren Faire (WHICH IS IN TWO WEEKS OH MY GOD SO MUCH TO DO)

For now, just have a couple of pics.

3. I actually managed to finish a project!

It was a small one, but still.

I had won a skein of Plymouth Gina in a contest years ago. I had started the Deep Sea Flower Dice Bag pretty early on in my knitting career, but never finished it.

I had pulled it out of the bottom of the WIP basket and was horrified by just how bad it looked. So, a quick rip later, and I was ready to try again.

Much better this time.

I fiddled with the sizing and pretty much doubled the number of stitches. I wanted to make sure this thing could hold my entire collection plus more. Because, let's be honest, hoarding dice is *almost* as much fun as hoarding yarn.

I fiddled with the color repeats to get the look I wanted.

And used almost the entire skein. I had so little left over that it wasn't even worth keeping.

I love the way it sits open, too.

Sadly, though, my bag is now severely lacking in the dice department. It doesn't have that nice full heft to it.

See?

Such a pitiful amount. John probably wouldn't care if I ordered a set... or five.

4. Mikayla, the absolute darling, gifted me with a wonderfully squishy skein of Malabrigo.

It's just begging to be made into a cowl or something equally as charming and delightful that lays right next to your skin.

5. Mermaid Lair has been started.

I'm through the first three charts and have just started the repeatable lace section.

6. What you don't see is the additional 4 to 5 hours worth of work, with a whole big stinking heap of frustration added in. 

I'm working on this using my tablet for the pattern rather than a physical copy out of sheer laziness and/or wanting to get started and not having access to a printer at like midnight when I started this thing for environmentally friendly reasons.

And this is how it normally looks when I have it zoomed to a comfortable level for me.

Which was fine until I get to Fancy Lace Chart 2.

See this part?

This section caused me to knit the whole damn chart TWICE, with major hair pulling out, crying, and major tinking.

Have you spotted what could have possibly thrown me off?

Yes, those are two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STITCHES!

That bloody little "3" made me want to set fire to the whole damn thing.

Things seem to be smooth sailing from here, aside from the ridiculous amount of beads.

7. Well, they would be smooth sailing if I was actually working on this shawl.

But I'm not.

I'm cheating. I'm cheating hard.

And I'm, once again, putting myself in the predicament of having to get some major things accomplished in a very short amount of time. 

Our Ren Faire date is in less than two weeks. July 22nd, to be exact.

And I have a boatload of costume things to get done. 

I refuse to list them all here because I'm just going to make myself cry.

AND we're finally getting a dumpster to clean out the junkyard that is our garage this week. Which means major hours devoted to cleaning.

So what better to do than add in KNITTING A WHOLE BLOODY SHAWL in this timeframe?

Well, what can I say? I'm a sucker for heaping enormous amounts of pressure on myself.

8. Assuming that I do get this done, and then get Mermaid Lair done in the following six weeks, it will make my last blog post and subsequent freakout null and void.

9. That's really bloody annoying to think about.

10. I may be a little bitter.

11. Damnit.

Glams and Games

I FINALLY am feeling up to chronicling the past couple of weeks, because, jesums, they've been a doozy.

Note to self: multiple people-heavy events two weekends in a row are going to completely drain all your spell slots.

Rather than trying to cram it all in at one time, I'll be kind enough to break it into a couple of posts.

First off, we need to go clear back to the weekend of the 16th. I know, I know, it's hard. You can't even remember what you had for dinner last night, but I believe in you!

Anyway, that weekend John and I had planned on going to Origins Game Fair in Columbus. It's become an annual tradition. And every year we swear that we're going to go for a few days, and it always turns into, "we're broke AF, guess it's just Saturday."

Enter my mom and her boyfriend. He had enough points built up in some reward system that he asked us if we wanted a free hotel room for the night. It was a belated anniversary present.

Uhh, yes please and thank you.

So John and I decided to go down to Columbus whenever we liked on Friday and then spend all day Saturday at Origins. We were hoping to go to the Pride festival and do some swimming. I also wanted to hit up Yarn It & Haberdashery.

But of course, this is us we're talking about. Nothing ever goes to plan.

First, we ended up leaving suuuppppper late, as per usual. We had to take Al to my mom's and then run a couple of small errands (like getting new swim trunks for the Supreme Butt Face).

We FINALLY started heading to Columbus in the early afternoon. We were supposed to arrive around 4, right when check-in would be. Perfect, right? We'd swim for a bit, get some food, meet Kayla at Pride... Sounds like a great friggin day.

Well, of course that's not what happened. There ended up being an accident RIGHT ON THE DAMNED EXIT WE NEEDED! Add in rush hour traffic on a Friday. We weren't going anywhere. And... we both had to use the bathroom.

We ended up getting off at the first exit we could find, looking desperately for somewhere we could use the bathroom and kill some time. Ended up stopping at a ToysRUs and proceeded to utterly destroy the restroom my god it had been hours and it was terrible *ahem* take care of business.

I felt bad about just using the bathroom and leaving, so I bought a friend.

This is Rupert.

I also bought some stuff so John and I could have an epic party in the hotel later.

Yes, I'm an adult, why do you ask?

We didn't end up getting to the hotel until 7:30, turning a quick 2 hour drive into a nearly 5 hour long purgatory. It really just shows the strength of John and I's marriage that we weren't at each other's throats by then.

So we decided to skip Pride, and just focus on swimming and relaxing in the room.

We knew we were getting a suite, but we certainly weren't expecting this level of swank.

Like, the bathroom was bigger than our bedroom at home. Mind. Blown.

I honestly felt a little guilty that we'd only be here for such a short amount of time.

We decided to head straight for the pool, only to discover much to our horror, there was a youth baseball team also staying in the hotel. And they were currently attempting to break out all the windows with their screaming in the pool.

Holy fucking nightmares, Batman.

We turned right back around and headed to the room.

At 9:30, we decided to go check again and lo, just a single family! We could deal with that.

So, we got to swim for 5 minutes before a dozen screeching demons all came flying into the room and dove right in, with no thought or care of any of the little ones in the pool.

They were screaming so loudly my ears were literally ringing. John and I were SCREAMING to try and talk to one another, but to no avail. We had to resort to hand gestures.

Needless to say, we left, throwing many a dirty look at the parents who were ignoring the steaming piles of human excrement that they referred to as their "children."

Yes, the parents were there and not doing a damn thing.

*sigh*

That's a rant for another day.

Anyway, we both hopped in the massive shower to clean the chlorine off and relax for a bit. I mean, there was a seat in there. I wanted to just spend the night in the shower, but John's a killjoy and wouldn't let me.

Dinner was the next goal and having such a fancy kitchen to work with, I felt like I had to cook something, but John argued that we were on vacation and I should get a break. So we compromised and made an easy-peasy dinner of sandwiches and trifles.

And yes, we poured our non-alcoholic beverages into the fancy wine glasses.

Look at that sweet layering action right there.

We busted out all the party stuff, too.

It was lit AF, yo.

We went to bed rather early (I think it was before 1?) and slept peacefully through the night...

Or not. Because I'm someone with IBS and anxiety. I got treated to a *lovely* panic attack at 4am. Not one of the super bad ones, but still pretty bad. Add in that I woke up in a pool of sweat from being overheated, and yeah, it was a rough night.

I told John to wake me back up at 7:30 because I really wanted to try for a morning swim while he had breakfast.

Well, he didn't.

Instead, he let me sleep until 9am, and then I got treated to another panic attack because "ohmygodIonlyhavetwohourstogetreadyandIknowI'mgoingtobestuckinthebathroomforawhileandyoustillwanttoeatandohmygoddddddddd"

He ended up going down for breakfast while I got ready to go. We managed to check out just a couple minutes past 11, after unsuccessfully trying to stuff the dishwasher in the suitcase.

Side note: I was proud of my super fast, crappy lighting makeup.

And yes, I made the necklace myself just for Pride.

Made one for Kayla, too!

Not bad for just using supplies I had on hand.

We'd already decided to go to Yarn It before Origins because they were having their 3rd anniversary sale. It wasn't far from the hotel, so off we went.

I got treated to an amazing gift bag with all sorts of goodies inside just for walking in the door.

And I decided on some FaerieGrl yarn as my souvenir skein. It's this gorgeous grey with an uber soft rainbow dyed into it.

Totes in love with it.

By the time we made it Origins, the Columbus Pride Parade was in full swing. We managed to find a break and run across the street to get to the convention center. But not before I stopped and grabbed a quick pic.

I wish I could have gotten a better one showing off the mass of people that were heading up the street. It was overwhelming and inspiring.

We finally, finally, FINALLY made it into Origins and John was a happy camper.

We took a pic with our favorite Boss Monster mascot.

I bought a crown.

Took a pic with a cutie.

And walked around the entire convention working on June's shawl.

AND I DIDN'T BREAK MY NEEDLES THIS YEAR!!!

I even managed to find a sheep.

This was just my swag from the convention.

Since this is so long, I won't go into any detail about what I got. But if you have questions, I'll answer in the comments.

We left finally left Columbus around 7 and headed home. The drive back was mostly uneventful (aside from nearly running out of gas and having to stop once just to wash bugs off the windshield...).

When we walked in the door, we were promptly ran over by the various fur babies who must have missed us terribly.

I mean, I wasn't even allowed to pee without a few of them pushing open the door and trying to get affection.

I'll spare you the pic and just leave you with this one instead.

All in all, it was a fun, if exhausting weekend. And I'm already looking forward to next year. I might be recovered by then.